Chance Taken

11

Chance

My mind has never been as blank as on the ride from Veronica’s office to the hospital. The buildings and cars and people just flashed by in multicolored blurs and I saw none of them, not really. I’ve been more aware of myself while dreaming at times than I was of that ride.

In the heavily air-conditioned admittance area of the hospital, I barely see the receptionist who asks me where I’m going, just bark, “The ER,” and stride right past her. The long white hallway that leads to Hunter’s room seems a million miles long and narrower than a straw as I walk along it.

But it’s alright. I see Cross and Roxie at the end of it, next to the windows that look in on Hunter and all the monitors and tubes he’s attached to. My dad and Ice are there too, as is Lily, Hunter’s half sister.

They haven’t been able to reach her at the Indian reservation in one of the Dakotas where she’s been living for over ten years, until late yesterday afternoon, so she must have driven without stopping to be here now. By the look of her puffy red eyes she probably spent the whole ride crying, which is odd because she’s like the female version of Cross and nothing ever shakes her. But she always adored Hunter, I remember that.

“What’s happening?” I ask, feeling like my throat is full of hot sand.

My father intercepts me before I reach the room. “There was a scare earlier, but it was just an arrhythmia from a blood clot, they think. He’s doing fine again now.”

“What does that mean?” I ask. “Isn’t he supposed to be getting better?”

“He is getting better,” my father says and I walk the rest of the way to the room window.

Hunter is lying under a white sheet, multicolored tubes and what-have-you attached to him and coiling out every which way, looking like the most poisonous snakes. His skin has a bluish tone to it and if it weren’t for the flashing lines on some of the monitors those snakes are attached to, I’d be sure he was already dead.

“His wounds are healing nicely,” Roxie tells me, and she sounds like she’s sleeping.

Cross, who already has his arm around her, pulls her closer. Her thick dark hair is a cloud around her head, and she's as pale as the walls. Roxie's always been like an aunt to me, and I'm not used to seeing her with anything but a patient half-smile on her face. Sometimes a frown, but rarely an angry one. I'm definitely not used to seeing her frightened out of her mind like she seems to be now.

“They’ve stopped sedating him so heavily,” Cross says. “He should be waking up soon.”

“I hope so,” I mutter and turn away from the window, right in the face of a nurse with pink hair.

“I have to ask you to please clear the hallway,” she says, not unkindly.

We don't say anything, just do what she asked us to do. And a few steps later, we’re all in the stuffy waiting room again. No one is saying it, but I’m sure we’re all thinking it. Will Hunter even be the same when he wakes up? He coded three times, once for almost two minutes. That long with no oxygen flow to the brain could be devastating, as Doc put it.

But I’ll deal with that when it comes to it.

And I’ll never forgive myself for not stopping him from going into that strip club. Sure, we didn’t expect this, but I suspected something. I failed him completely. I might as well have been wielding the knife that put him here.

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